Bauhinia purprea agglutinin (BPA) is a well‐known lectin that recognizes galactosyl glycoproteins and glycolipids. In the present study, we firstly found that BPA bound to human prostate cancer specimens but not to normal prostate ones. Therefore, we sought to develop BPA‐PEG‐modified liposomes (BPA‐PEG‐LP) encapsulating anticancer drugs for the treatment of prostate cancer. We examined the tumor targetability of BPA‐PEG‐LP with human prostate cancer DU145 cells, and observed that fluorescently labeled BPA‐PEG‐LP dominantly associated with the cells via the interaction between liposome‐surface BPA and cell‐surface galactosyl molecules. We also observed that BPA‐PEG‐LP accumulated in the prostate cancer tissue after the i.v. injection to DU145 solid cancer‐bearing mice, and strongly bound to the cancer cells. In a therapeutic study, DU145 solid cancer‐bearing mice were i.v. injected thrice with BPA‐PEG‐LP encapsulating doxorubicin (BPA‐PEG‐LPDOX, 2 mg/kg/day as the DOX dosage) or PEG‐modified liposomes encapsulating DOX (PEG‐LPDOX). As a result, BPA‐PEG‐LPDOX significantly suppressed the growth of the DU145 cancer cells, whereas PEG‐LPDOX at the same dosage as DOX showed little anti‐cancer effect. The present study suggested that BPA‐PEG‐LP could be a useful drug carrier for the treatment of human prostate cancers.

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Angle measurement system using inertial sensors was developed by our research group, in which lower limb angles were calculated based on the integral of angular velocity using Kalman filter. The angle calculation method was shown to be practical in measurement of angles in the sagittal plane during gait of healthy subjects. In this paper, in order to realize practical measurements of 3 dimensional (3D) movements with inertial sensors, the integral-based and the quaternion-based methods were tested in measurement of 2D movements in the sagittal plane and 3D movements of rigid body models of lower limb. The tested three calculation methods, extended integral-based method, quaternion-based method proposed in this study and simplified previous quaternion-based method, were suggested to measure the 2D movements with high measurement accuracy. It was also suggested that there were no large difference in measurement of 2D and 3D movements between 3 methods. Visualization by stick figure animation of circumduction gait simulated by a healthy subject also suggested that the angle calculation methods can be useful. It is expected to improve measurement accuracies of 3D movements to those of 2D movements. 35 Watanabe T. and Ohashi K.. Angle Measurements during 2D and 3D Movements of a Rigid Body Model of Lower Limb-Comparison between Integral-based and Quaternion-based Methods.

When writing an object’s name, humans mentally construct its spelling. This capacity critically depends on use of the dual-structured linguistic system, in which meaningful words are represented by combinations of meaningless letters. Here we search for the evolutionary origin of this capacity in primates by designing dual-structured bigram symbol systems where different combinations of meaningless elements represent different objects. Initially, we trained Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata) in an object-bigram symbolization task and in a visually-guided bigram construction task. Subsequently, we conducted a probe test using a symbolic bigram construction task. From the initial trial of the probe test, the Japanese macaques could sequentially choose the two elements of a bigram that was not actually seen but signified by a visually presented object. Moreover, the animals’ spontaneous choice order bias, developed through the visually-guided bigram construction learning, was immediately generalized to the symbolic bigram construction test. Learning of dual-structured symbols by the macaques possibly indicates pre-linguistic adaptations for the ability of mentally constructing symbols in the common ancestors of humans and Old World monkeys.